Inspiring rhyming headlines everywhere, Valiant’s successful relaunch of their company and line has now expanded to a fifth monthly title, with the announcement that their ‘Ninjak’ property will return in September. This follows on word-of-mouth build-up for X-O Manowar and Harbinger which has proved pretty successful, at least in terms of building up awareness for the returning company. Valiant have not yet announced a creative team for the series.

Ninjak was originally created by Michael Moretti and Joe Quesada, back in the nineties. The character is a ninja, which you may already have assumed, although the most well-known version of the character is a British man called Colin King. King works for the Secret Service in his spare time, is highly qualified in the field of ninja-ing, and is also thought to be the smartest person in the world. Well, naturally.

Another interesting thing: if I know my helmets – and lord help us all if I don’t, you guys – the helmet in this teaser looks a lot like the one worn by the lead character in Robert Venditti and Cary Nord’s X-O Manowar series. Could we expect Ninjak to first return in the first revival of Valiant Comics’ most well-known tradition: the crossover?

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Comments

Maybe it’s just me, but it always dismays me when a new title is announced without the creative team being announced at the same time. Without writers and artists, especially without good writers and artists, comic books aren’t worth my interest. I don’t care about Ninjak, but I might care about the creators.

It feels a lot like Valiant want to show that they’re solvent enough to afford to launch a new ongoing title. They’re announcing the book simply to show that their relaunch is working and they’re in a position where they can.

The last version of Ninjak prior to the Acclaim relaunch was the best I think, with Mike Baron and Bryan Hitch on the character.

And I agree with the sentiment that he may be suffering a debut in another title before he gets his own again. Even without the Solar/Magnus/Turok holy trinity, Valiant/Acclaim has a lot of characters to play with, and it won’t all happen overnight.